***
A ripple, a vibration, an echo. Faye felt it coming through the peephole. She felt it as much on the skin of her hands and face as she did with her ears.
A bell. A chime.
Was the grandfather clock ringing a new quarter-hour? Were all the other clocks in the house chiming in?
Or had somebody just rung the doorbell?
Faye ramped up her assault on the peephole cover. She slid it back and forth, clicking it hard when it reached the limit of its range of motion, then twisting it back and trying again.
She was going to make somebody hear this thing.
It occurred to her that Daniel might be the someone who heard, and it might bring him into their prison before his regular midnight visit. They needed to be prepared for this possibility.
“Magda. I hear something. Close Rachel’s roof. Drag Glynis over here close to the door. And get in your position.”
Glynis cried out when Magda lifted both corners of her makeshift bed and tugged. Without Faye’s help, she wasn’t strong enough to move the wounded woman gently. She could only lean back with all her weight and pull hard. Faye wished that she believed it possible that anyone outside could hear Glynis scream.
Grind. Click.
Faye called out for help in the only way she knew, by making a little tiny noise, over and over.
***
Daniel didn’t so much hear the clicking. It was more that he felt it.
Someone was at the door. It made him nervous to usher them past the place where the three women waited with his children, but it shouldn’t be a problem. There was no way anyone could hear them scream.
But the metallic clicking penetrated their prison walls just enough to rattle him.
He needed to answer the doorbell. His guests might just barge in, if he left them out there too long.
Would they hear the clicking? Would they write it off to the ticking grandfather clock? Would they comment on it to him? Would they mention it to anyone else?
He knew the anxiety showed on his face, but he had no choice. He pulled open the front door and said, loudly and brightly, “Welcome to Dunkirk Manor!” Then he kept talking—prattling, actually—saying anything that crossed his mind, just to cover the barely discernible noise. He reached in his pocket and began fiddling with his loose change, in hopes that the metallic clinks would mask the tiny noise his captives were making.
And he began weighing his options.
He had too many prisoners. Magda would have to go. And, regrettable though it was, the other two women would need to be bound and gagged until he had their babies in hand. Then he and Suzanne could take her family fortune and flee to some foreign country where no one asked questions and where the American dollar still went a long, long way.
***
The echo of Dunkirk Manor’s doorbell rang in Joe’s ears. He suspected that his ears were ringing, anyway, out of panic and dread.
Joe was accustomed to being able to hear wild animals breathe. Now, all he could hear was the rush of blood in his ears.
The mansion’s door swung open, quiet as a breath, and Joe followed Overstreet into the entry hall. Daniel was talking, asking Overstreet if he’d made progress on Glynis’ case. His high-pitched voice, his flushed face, and the incessant jangling made by his hand shuffling through the coins in his pocket…all these things made Joe crazy.
Something else was jangling. Joe moved his head from side to side, trying to pinpoint its location, but it was too faint.
Overstreet didn’t hear it. Joe could tell. His eyes were completely focused on the kidnapping suspect at his side.
Something about the rhythm of the faint noise made him think of Faye.
The three of them passed through the entry hall and into the atrium, and Joe lost the sound. There were two clocks in the atrium, one on each balcony. Both of them ticked loudly, for precision-engineered timepieces. But he didn’t hear anything that sounded like Faye.
***
Faye saw three people move past the viewfinder. They were blurry but, if forced to guess, she’d say that two of them were Detective Overstreet and Daniel. One of them, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was her husband. No one moved like Joe.
All three of them had passed into the atrium now, joining Allyce Dunkirk’s ghost.
Anybody but Faye would have stopped her noisemaking foolishness after that, since it had so clearly not worked. But Faye knew that Joe was out there.
Grind.
Click.
***
Daniel’s beloved wife Suzanne appeared in the atrium, standing in the dining room entry. She greeted the three of them warmly, and Daniel saw an opportunity.
He gestured at Joe and Detective Overstreet, saying, “Darling, would you take our guests into the dining room and pour them some coffee? I’ve got some things upstairs in my office that I want to show them.”
Daniel was confident that his wife would show her habitual hospitality skills, buying him ten minutes alone. He backed through the open door behind him into the entry hall, knowing that they’d presume he was taking the elevator. In a single motion, he retrieved the butcher knife hanging on a hook behind the grandfather clock, slid it into a barely visible seam in the paneled wall, and triggered a latch hidden within that wall.
The hook had been designed to hide a long thin sliver of metal that served as a key, but Glynis, by throwing a screaming fit, had forced him to arm himself. Fortunately, his weapon opened the door just as well as the key had.
The hidden door swung open and he was inside the turret within five seconds of leaving Joe and the policeman with Suzanne…less…so quickly that the little pregnant woman standing on the other side of the door sprawled in the floor. Why couldn’t she be more careful when she was carrying his child?
Daniel brandished the knife. “How hard is it to sit in here and be quiet? All of you. I heard you making that noise. I heard you. You have to stop it.” He focused his eyes on Faye. “You must stop it, because you’re going to make me hurt you. You’ve already fixed it so that I have to tie you all up, even…”
His eyes raked the room.
“Where’s the child? Where’s the little girl?”
Suzanne needed a child. Suzanne was everything in his world, everything. Nothing had been right since Annie died, and Daniel was doing everything he knew how to do to make it right. There were two babies in this room, waiting to be born, and they were guarantees of a family. He and Suzanne had always wanted a big family, but no child had ever come to them except Annie, and even she only stayed ten years.
The babies were…necessary. He wanted the babies desperately. But they might turn out to be boys. The only way to make things right, really right, was to replace Annie. Little Rachel was unquestionably a girl, so she was essential.
And she wasn’t here.
***
Faye shook her head, trying to gather her wits after suddenly being knocked hard to the ground. Her body hurt from navel to knees after striking the concrete floor with her pelvis. She thanked God that she was sitting on Rachel’s trapdoor, because she could think of nothing worse than for the little girl to appear right this minute.
Then something happened that was almost as horrible as watching Rachel reveal herself to a killer. Her whole middle spasmed, as if her body were trying to cave in on itself. So this was what a labor pain felt like.
“Where…IS…she?” he bellowed, reaching for Magda as she crouched by the door.
Faye watched in horror, breathless and panting. She needed to do something, anything, but she couldn’t. Not until this contraction passed and she could rise to her feet.
Daniel reached down and yanked a blanket from beneath Glynis, who shrieked in pain. Using the knife to slash the blanket into strips, he said, “You will all sit still while I tie you up, and somebody is going to tell me where the little girl is right now or…”
He waved the knife at Magda, and Faye prayed that he didn’t finish his sentence, because if R
achel heard him say, “…or I will kill her mother,” then nothing would keep the little girl in her pit. Not even Faye’s substantial weight on the trap door would do it.
“I heard you make that noise,” he raved at Faye, still slicing fabric. “Do you want to bring this whole thing down around my ears?”
Well, yes. Faye did, and Daniel should know it. But this man was not rational now, if he ever had been. The fact that he’d taken the risk of entering this room in the daytime, knowing that he’d have to risk being seen when he left…these things told her that the situation had reached an ignition point.
Daniel went down on his knees and reached for Magda with his right hand. In his left hand, he held a knife.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
With a wordless glance, Joe and Overstreet agreed to cover Daniel by splitting up. Overstreet put the lie to his tubby frame by taking the atrium stairs two at a time. If Daniel had gotten on the elevator to go to his apartment, Overstreet would be waiting for him when it opened. If he’d, for some reason, gone to the third floor, then Joe and Overstreet couldn’t cover him. But he’d have to come down through the second and first floors to get out, and they’d be waiting for him.
Joe crossed the atrium, reaching for the door to the entry hall. If Daniel was still in there, Joe intended to subdue him. If he’d gotten out the front door, there were officers with rifles waiting out there for him.
Daniel was trapped. There was no place for him to go. Still, Joe cursed the inattention that had brought them to this point. Not inattention, actually—they had made their mistake by role-playing too well. When Suzanne had appeared, both he and Overstreet had hurried across the atrium to shake her hand, instinctively covering the fact that they weren’t at all surprised to see her.
Daniel, looking for a chance to flee, had lingered at the door behind them and taken that opportunity. He’d had no way of knowing that Joe and Overstreet were onto him, so he’d expected them to wait patiently for him, sipping coffee with Suzanne in the dining room. So while he might have hoped to gain ten or fifteen minutes—to do what? Joe couldn’t think about it—he had in fact only gained a few seconds.
Because it only took a few seconds for Joe to cross the atrium, open the door…
…and find the entry hall empty.
The elevator was sitting open, so Daniel had not boarded it. Joe flung open the front door. The officers waiting so unobtrusively in their parked cars were still sitting there, waiting for something to happen. No fugitive had fled out the front door.
Daniel had walked into this room and simply evaporated.
Joe wasted a few seconds by sticking his head into the atrium and calling to Suzanne, “He didn’t go upstairs. Get Overstreet and tell him that Daniel’s somewhere down here.”
The entry hall was a hollow cube of polished wood. It shouldn’t be empty, but it was. Joe stood in the center of the cube and tried to make sense of what he’d just seen.
Where was Daniel? And where was Faye?
Faye had been trying to reach him with that funny little noise. He knew it.
He called out to her. “Faye. I know you’re here.”
Nothing.
“Help me find you!”
Nothing. No voice. No faint clicking. Nothing.
He looked up at the balcony, lined with old and beautiful books. The noise he’d heard had been closer at hand. And Daniel had not had time to climb those stairs and vanish. Faye was down here on the ground floor somewhere.
Joe began checking the elevator carefully for latches that might open into a hidden shaft beyond the elevator shaft. Maybe the elevator didn’t take up the entire turret.
Overstreet appeared, and Joe said, “They’re here. Somewhere near this room. And he’s with them. Get some tools. We need to take this elevator apart.”
Overstreet rushed out the front door. Joe crawled all over the floor, running his hands over the ornate inlaid wood, praying for some sign of a trap door. The carpentry was flawless, without a single seam wide enough to shove even a piece of typing paper into. Pounding on every square inch of that flawless floor yielded no hollow sound to hint at a space beneath.
Joe stood and yanked priceless artworks from the walls, throwing them in a corner. He worked his way around the room, tapping and rubbing his hands on the sleek oak. The wood was adorned with ornate moldings and raised panels. To Joe’s sensitive hands, each piece of carved wood felt seamlessly joined to the next one.
It was hard to believe that this woodwork had withstood a century in such good shape. Maybe it had been restored. Maybe during the restoration someone had taken the opportunity to add a secret room. Or maybe the secret room had been there the whole time.
All of the panels around the room were identical and perfect. All of them were the same…except for one.
Just to the right of the grandfather clock, Joe found a single seam almost concealed by the grain of the wood. Two feet to the right of this seam was another seam, and this one was slightly out of line. If he ran his thumbnail horizontally in front of him, it caught on the slightly raised panel to the right of the second seam. The two-foot panel was slightly depressed on that side, which made it feel to Joe like a door that was slightly ajar. Very, very slightly ajar. Like maybe a millimeter ajar.
It wasn’t much. It was infinitesimal, actually. But maybe it could be more.
Joe backed up and prepared to use his shoulder as a battering ram.
***
Daniel had taken his sweet time in binding Magda’s hands and feet. Faye had felt the contraction in her belly ebb, but she didn’t dare interfere with Daniel’s work. The knife was rarely far from a vulnerable part of Magda’s anatomy—throat, heart, belly. Glynis lay on the floor, eyes closed and sobbing, but Faye couldn’t make herself look away from Magda.
Magda’s eyes caught Faye’s. Then they twitched slightly in the direction of the door.
Making sure Daniel wasn’t looking at her, Faye sneaked a glance. Then she blessed her friend’s presence of mind and sheer cussedness. Despite the fact that Daniel’s appearance had been a total surprise, Magda had managed to execute one part of their plan. She had shoved the water bottle cap into the doorframe.
Faye knew she shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d never known anyone else with Magda’s clear-headedness and strength of will. No one else other than Faye herself, that is.
There was just a teeny problem. The slamming of the heavy door had obliterated the bottle cap. Bits of plastic protruded from the gap between door and frame, but Faye had no confidence that enough plastic had jammed into that gap to keep the door from closing and latching.
Worse, the door opened inward, so even if it hadn’t latched, they were going to have to figure how to pry it open. This was going to be a problem, once they were all trussed up like turkeys. If it had opened the other way, Faye and Magda could have taken turns running into the door like little battering rams, but they hadn’t been that lucky.
***
Inside the entry hall’s concrete wall was a delicate but strong latch, designed to guard a secret room and its secret contents. When firmly engaged, the door was so sturdy that it might as well have been a part of the wall. But a tiny sliver of plastic jammed into the door opening had interfered just enough to stop it short of closing. Not far short, perhaps. The distance was vanishingly small between the door as it was now and the door as it was when it was closed. But that distance was enough.
***
A body the size of Joe’s carries a good bit of momentum with it when it careens full speed into another large object, like a heavy door. Bracing himself, he crashed hard into the concealed entry. Nothing happened.
He did it again. Nothing happened.
He backed up to try again, wishing like hell that Faye would give him some kind of sign. If she would only answer him. He had been calling for her since Daniel vanished, but there was no answer, not even that faint metallic clicking.
He hit the door again, and the impact r
attled the keys in his pocket. Hearing Faye call his name, telling him she was alive, would be the best possible thing to happen at this moment. But it didn’t happen.
Joe was very clear about the second best possible thing that could happen. He needed this door to open, or at least to budge a tiny bit. And it did. When his bruised shoulder struck the door, again, he felt motion. The door only swung a millimeter in the right direction, but it did swing.
Joe backed up so he could throw himself at a nearly solid wall, one more time.
***
The door shuddered. Daniel, crouching beside Magda as he finished tying her bonds, whipped his head in that direction. He had the presence of mind to maintain his grip on the knife, but he took his eyes off his hostages.
In the case of hostages like Magda and Faye, this was a big mistake.
In a heartbeat, Faye was on her knees, going for the knife and knocking Daniel onto his butt in the process.
Magda did her part by headbutting him in the mouth. Then she rolled onto her side, so that she could use her powerful but bound legs, mermaid-style, to pound him in the stomach. This approach would have worked, if Daniel hadn’t had the reflexes of a lifelong tennis player. He, too, rolled onto his side, taking the blow on his hip, instead of his vulnerable abdomen.
Taking this defensive posture, instead of grabbing or striking at Magda, left Daniel with one free arm. He wrapped it around Faye’s throat, and squeezed hard.
Faye’s mouth gaped open as she struggled for air. Magda backed off.
The door shuddered again. Faye thought she could hear someone shouting outside, but she couldn’t answer with Daniel’s arm squeezing her windpipe shut. How much longer could she stay conscious?
Even more importantly—how was this affecting the baby? Maybe her best plan was to go ahead and “pass out.” If she feigned unconsciousness, Daniel would probably quit choking her and her baby could keep getting oxygen.
As she closed her eyes and went limp, she heard two things. She heard Daniel announce, “I am getting out of here, and this woman is going to help me do it.”
Strangers Page 28
